Noir Mystery Thriller

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Neal Stephenson is continually rocking the literary world with his brazen and brilliant fictional creations - whether he’s reimagining the past (The Baroque Cycle), inventing the future (Snow Crash), or both (Cryptonomicon).

Since losing his knighthood, Crispin Guest has reinvented himself as an investigator for hire known as the Tracker. But his reputation will once again be put to the test with his latest case. Jacob of Provençal, a Jewish physician at the king's court, is missing a set of documents that he claims contain the power to bring forth a dangerous demon. Meanwhile, it seems a monster has already been unleashed on the city. Vulnerable street children are being abducted and murdered, their mutilated bodies the only clues left behind.

I came here to disappear. A quiet neighborhood. A fresh start. A life I could finally call mine. But nothing in Strathmore Hills is what it seems. Especially her. The girl next door remembers things I never told her. She speaks in riddles, rewinds old tapes, and watches me when she thinks I’m not looking. She says she’s trying to help. But every time I talk to her, I remember less about who I was— and more about a life I don’t recognize. I think she knows what’s happening to me. I think she’s always known. And if I can’t figure out who I am soon… I might become someone else ...

From the moment Lucy met her husband's mother, Diana, she was kept at arm's length. Diana was exquisitely polite and properly friendly, but Lucy knew she was not what Diana envisioned. That was five years ago. Now, Diana is dead, a suicide note found near her body. Diana claims she no longer wanted to live because of a battle with cancer. But the autopsy finds no cancer. The autopsy does find traces of poison and evidence of suffocation.

When successful mystery novelist and fledgling private detective Marius Quin is invited to speak at the Mystery and Detection Society he jumps at the chance of a luxurious weekend away on the English coast. But arriving at Torquay’s Grand Hotel with his sleuthing partner Lady Bella Montague, there is the definite sense that all is not well. When they wake the next morning to discover the body of a cantankerous local in the hotel pool, the things go from bad to worse. But how can the duo catch a killer when every piece of evidence they uncover is contradicted by two more?

Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. Joyland is a brand-new novel and has never previously been published.

Los Angeles, 1963: African American Korean War veteran Harry Ingram earns a living as a news photographer and occasional process server: chasing police radio calls and dodging baseball bats. With racial tensions running high on the eve of Martin Luther King’s Freedom Rally, Ingram risks ending up one of the victims at every crime scene he photographs. When Ingram hears a call over the police scanner to the scene of a deadly automobile accident, he recognizes the vehicle described as belonging to his good friend and old army buddy, the white jazz trumpeter Ben Kinslow.

Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within the respective city. In Hong Kong Noir, 14 of the city’s finest authors explore the dark heart of the Pearl of the Orient in haunting stories of depravity and despair.

Even a city that boasts three hundred days of sunshine a year has its sudden, often violent storms—and writers have long taken advantage of that metaphor. Renowned authors Katherine Anne Porter, Jack Kerouac, Stephen King, Rex Burns, Robert Greer, Michael Connelly, and Kali Fajardo-Anstine—among many others—have brilliantly portrayed this picturesque but often merciless city. Today, Denver is home to a thriving literary scene, with writers of all stripes finding inspiration in its people and streets. The authors and stories featured in Denver Noir are no exception....

Hollywood’s glamour hides a dark secret, and Eddie Ankin is the fall guy. When Hollywood’s “it” girl turns up dead, former Marine and seasoned stuntman Eddie Ankin is framed for the brutal murder. Determined to clear his name, Eddie dives into a twisted investigation—one that pits him against powerful enemies with deadly secrets. Detective Kim Mallory, a savvy LAPD investigator, suspects a pattern in the killings. Overlooked by her department, she teams up with Eddie in an uneasy alliance to catch a killer the city would rather ignore. Together, they’re drawn deep into ...

Cal Sounder is a detective working for the police on certain very sensitive cases. So when he’s called in to investigate a homicide at a local apartment, he’s surprised by the routineness of it all. But when he arrives on scene, Cal soon learns that the victim—Roddy Tebbit, an otherwise milquetoast techie—is well over seven feet tall. And although he doesn’t look a day over thirty, he is ninety-one years old. Tebbit is a Titan—one of this dystopian, near-future society’s genetically altered elites. And this case is definitely Cal’s thing.

One of the 20th-century's most darkly beautiful works of crime fiction - a story of carny life, spiritualism, and a con man of merciless resolve.

Sam Monroe thought his steamy love affair with Manhattan socialite Laura Nielson was dead and buried, but when she didn’t show up after unexpectedly calling him late at night and asking to meet, he decides to investigate. He finds her naked on her penthouse balcony, strangled, his dog tags wrapped around her neck. With a bull’s-eye on his back as the prime suspect, Sam begins a search for the killer that reveals Laura’s involvement with several men, some with ties to a well-known crime family.

A group of international players has gathered in a tiny village off the coast of Iceland for a diplomatic dinner. There’s Kristján, the mayor reeling from a personal tragedy. Graeme, the ambassador with an agenda to push. Jane, his wife, along for the ride on another one of her husband’s many business trips. And several others, from Iceland and from abroad, each with their own reason for being there, their own loyalties and grievances. By the end of the night, one of them will be dead. And it will be up to the ambassador’s wife, Jane, to figure out how—and why.

After his son is convicted of capital murder, Vietnam War veteran Jeremiah Fitzjurls takes over the care of his granddaughter, Joanna, raising her with as much warmth as can be found in an Ozark junkyard outfitted to be an armory. He teaches her how to shoot and fight, but there is not enough training in the world to protect her when the dreaded Ledfords, notorious meth dealers and fanatical white supremacists, come to collect on Joanna as payment for a long-overdue blood debt.

While working one afternoon on the Northern Divide, a young tree-marker makes a grisly discovery: in a squatter's cabin near an old mill town, a family has been murdered. An army vet coming off a successful turn leading a task force that took down infamous biker criminals, Detective Frank Yakabuski arrives in Ragged Lake, a nearly abandoned village, to solve the family's murder. But no one is willing to talk. With a winter storm coming, Yakabuski sequesters the locals in a fishing lodge as he investigates the area with his two junior officers.

Ray Lilly is living on borrowed time. He's the driver for Annalise Powliss, a high-ranking member of the Twenty Palace Society, a group of sorcerers devoted to hunting down and executing rogue magicians. But because Ray betrayed her once, Annalise is looking for an excuse to kill him - or let someone else do the job. Unfortunately for both of them, Annalise's next mission goes wrong, leaving her critically injured. With the little magic he controls, Ray must complete her assignment alone.

Dive into "A Major League Murder: A Noir Mystery" by H.D. Ingles, where the game is deadly, and every player hides a secret. Evelyn St. John – known as Eve to those taken in by her charm – is a woman of unparalleled beauty and a chilling lack of morality. Eve plots the murder of her wealthy husband, William St. John. Using her appeal like a weapon, she enlists Tom, the perfect pawn-a man easily swayed by a woman’s curves and the promise of wealth. Their plan to stage a robbery and murder William takes a bad turn, forcing Eve to take matters into her own hands. Closing in on her trail ...

New York, 2061: The place called the Pleasure Academy is a living nightmare where abducted girls are trapped, trained for a life of abject service while their souls are slowly but surely destroyed. Dorian, a thirteen-year-old runaway who’d been imprisoned there, might never have made it out if not for her fellow inmate Mina, who’d hatched the escape plan. Mina was the more daring of the two—but they’d been equally desperate.

Cleveland Noir joins Columbus Noir as the Akashic Noir series continues its tour of Ohio and navigates the dregs of the North Shore.